Header Right

Main navigation

Sony a7R III Review Round-Up

The Sony a7R III has been out for a couple of months now, so there are plenty of reviews out there, some good and some not so good.

To save you the trouble and time of working out which reviews are worth reading and watching, I’ve rounded up all of the best Sony a7R III reviews to-date.

I’ve yet to actually find any solid 3+ month reviews for the a7R III, a lot of the reviews already out have been written by journalists who attended the Sony launch event. This is rather easy to spot as many of their sample photos have either been taken in New York at the launch event or a media event in Arizona; and they all feature the same models, cars, cowboys, and hot air balloons.

I’ve included both video and written reviews, I’ll start with the video reviews:

Video Reviews

Dan Watson

Jared Polin

Max Yuryev

Tony & Chelsea Northrup

Matt Granger

Gordon Laing

Written Reviews

DPReview

It’s fair to say that the Sony a7R III is a great option for an incredibly wide variety of photographers. Offering great image quality, fast burst shooting speeds, high quality 4K video and a reasonably compact package, it’s an incredibly well-rounded offering. The endless customization options can be daunting at first, but in the end, it’s a camera equally at home capturing fast action one moment, and expansive landscapes the next.

DXOMARK a7R III Sensor Review

It’s clear that the Sony A7R III has a high-performing sensor that’s capable of capturing images with a broad range of color and tone, while keeping noise well under control. However, comparing the A7R III sensor to the Nikon D850’s reveals the advantage that the Nikon camera’s lower minimum sensitivity (ISO) value brings. Photographers who predominantly shoot in bright light or capture motionless subjects with the camera on a tripod will record the most information, be it color, tone, or detail with the Nikon D850 set to ISO 32. However, if they require values above that, the Sony A7R III sensor produces marginally better images.

The Phoblographer

The Sony a7r III is a fantastic camera that is pretty much everything that every working photographer needs. Good autofocus? Great RAW file versatility? Third party lens support? Third party flash support? Improved battery life? Dual card slots? Weather sealing? I mean, what is there to not like. Anything that isn’t that great about the Sony a7r III can be overcome and in no way do I see it being a burden in the long run. The Sony a7r III is replacing my Sony a7 as my main camera, although I still still keep the original due to just how good it still is. I recommend the Sony a7r III for working professionals and semi-professionals. And if you get it, I strongly recommend using it with Capture One to make the most of it.

Stuck in Customs

Trey doesn’t actually summarize his feelings for the camera, so just check out his full review here.

Kinotika

We can happily say that the reality of the a7R III is that it’s performance backs up those impressive numbers. 42.4-million-pixel image sequences at 10fps with quick processing time and a generally reliable autofocusing for the majority of most sequences. Yes please!

Add the silent shutter for the discreet shooting of your subjects and we would have no hesitation to recommend the a7R III for sports photography (plus weddings and wildlife). If you make a living out of sports photography, we think the a9 is a much better option – but for most folk the a7R III will be more than enough.

CameraLabs

Sony’s Alpha A7r Mark III is a highly capable camera that’s equally at home shooting high resolution stills as it is handling fast action or filming quality video. The 42 Megapixel full-frame sensor may be inherited from the Mark II but Sony’s improved the processing to deliver superb quality, which in the right conditions the composite Pixel Shift mode can improve further.

The ability to shoot at 10fps with confident autofocus makes the A7r Mark III surprisingly good at sports, and great for events and wildlife shooting too with its silent shutter. Movie shooters will enjoy 4k in full-frame or cropped APSC coverage at up to 30p with S-Log2, 3 and HLG HDR, along with 1080 at up to 120p for slow motion. Earlier concerns over battery life have been banished, and the camera handles better overall with improved controls, a more detailed viewfinder, twin card slots and even a touchscreen. The Wifi control also works well, complemented by Bluetooth for seamless location tagging. Sony’s really thrown everything into the A7r Mark III to deliver one of the most capable and impressive cameras I’ve tested.

On the downside, the removal of downloadable apps means Sony needs to find a way to implement interval and bulb timers, the touchscreen is underused, it would have been nice to have 4k at 60p and or 10 bit, and only one of the SD slots will exploit the speed of UHS-II cards. But on the whole, shooting with the A7r Mark III is an overwhelmingly positive and impressive experience, with a feature-set and quality that will satisfy a wealth of photographers. It’s easy to Highly Recommend.

Ken Rockwell

Love him or hate him, I can’t possibly leave out Ken.

The Sony A7R III is the best mirrorless camera ever introduced for consumer photography. It’s super easy to shoot, with clairvoyant autofocus and exposure that makes it trivial to get hundreds of ultrasharp photos every day — especially of moving subjects!

I’m also fortunate to have owned the a7R III pretty much as soon as it was available in the UK. I plan to write my own review over the next couple of months, but I’d like to use it a lot more before penning my own opinion. That said, I’d certainly struggle to find too many negatives about it, my poor a7R II is looking very dusty indeed!

About Timothy Mayo

I love shooting landscapes, wildlife and sports the most, but will happily point my camera at pretty much anything. I started Alpha Shooters in 2017 to share my own photographic journey and experiences with shooting Sony. The site has since evolved into a community and resource for Sony Alpha Shooters. If you would like to be part of this journey then you can join our growing community of Alpha Shooters here. Or you can find out more about my story here. I've also recently gone mad and joined Instagram, Flickr, and 500px.